soul; that impure substances from filthy regions of the spiritual world have been allowed to collect, and to insinuate themselves by a vicious influx, and to grow by the indulgence of many years into a complication of spiritual disease, more rooted and more functional than any disease of the body can possibly be; that ossifications, enlargements, contractions, local and general disorders, afflict and permeate the whole spiritual structure, and make the man, like Isaiah's description of him, from the sole of the foot even unto the head, of no soundness at all, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores;- - when all this is realized, then we may comprehend the necessity of a different curative process than any merely metaphysical speculation has ever yet suggested. And further, the disease is strictly internal. Internal even in regard to the spirit. For it is the life, the very vital principle of the soul, that is afflicted. Its cause was there. Not by any external injury that has been suffered to mar and waste the spiritual body, and not even by any collocation of external circumstances which have so wrought upon the man, as to entice him into evil; these undoubtedly have had their effect; but it was his own free and inner choice, - the life of his will,—the love that ruled him, and was with him in quiet, and prompted all his thoughts, and by the most deliberate purposes has so woven this web-work and tissue of corruption around and through his soul, that he is fast there; he is fixed and formed in evil; his very and supreme life has organized itself in this body of sin and death, so that he needs all the strength so agonized and prayed for by the apostle, to be fully delivered from it. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." (Jer. 13: 23.) Yes, we see but too plainly why it is and how it is. And now, to break up such a life all at once would destroy the man. Therefore it must be done "little by little."

The truth is also, that regeneration cannot be a quick or instantaneous work, because it is in part, the work of undoing

what thousands of generations have been doing. The human race descended from a high, infant state of purity and goodness, down to the time when Christ made his appearance. Since then, we have no doubt it has been ascending. Everybody knows that the highest form of civilization is connected with Christianity, that it received its quickening from its lifegiving energies, and its crowning glory is the Christian faith. Now, the upward process, speaking of the race in its totality, must, as to time, correspond somewhat with its downward march. We do not undertake to say as long, but only to indicate the very patient steps of its toiling, upward progress. As to the individual, he knows, if he know any thing at all by worthy experience of the work to be done, that it is for the most part a laborious and protracted one. For the most part, too, it is quiet. It is often a still, quiet agony. Man indeed “hears the sound thereof;" his affections then are disposed to obedience; but he cannot tell whence frequently is the occasion of the strife; alas! he knows not how the winds of heaven, by the direction of a superior power, are made to sweep through all the channels of his disordered soul. And as he is frequently unaware of the work, so, instead of quietly submitting to it, as in the more advanced stages of regeneration, it is "too often only as the wind that bloweth, in fitful gusts and fearful apprehensions."

The Lord com

For

the blade, then (Mark, 4: 26– man has in the

We revert again to the analogies of nature. pares the kingdom of heaven to a man casting seed into the ground, and he "should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 28.) This correspondence shows the part that great work of the regenerate life. It is not his to create himself anew, any more than it is the part of the husbandman to cause the seed to germinate and spring forth from the ground. All that the husbandman can do, is to prepare the ground, cast

in the seed, and keep his fields from weeds and obstructions. The growth thereof, he knoweth not how it is. Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but God must give the increase. How perfectly plain it is, from all these analogies, that the chief work of man, in his spiritual re-creation, is simply a negative work! He cannot create any goodness nor any truth. He can only keep from sinning, (and he cannot do even this without the divine aid,) pluck out all the weeds of his spiritual nature, prepare the ground of his susceptible heart for the rains and dews of heaven, and for the Sun of Righteousness to warm and invigorate with life.

Sometimes Christians are seized with sudden resolutions. They are determined now to do some great thing. They say -"I am going to do this and this; I am going to accomplish so much." Alas! they know not the great secret of the whole of our mortal labors. It is only to abstain from evil, root out all obstructions to the heavenly influence, and let God do the rest. By removing obstructions the Divine life flows in all the more freely, and this it is which does the work. It is so in physical matters. No physician ever cures the body. He can only remove obstructions, and so aid nature herself, by a freer circulation of the vital fluids, to effect her own cure. Man, to be sure, has a practical free-will to do even the positive acts of a good life, but his will is solely stimulated by the divine influx consequent upon his removing of evils. A man cannot be thus engaged in removing evils without being at the same time engaged in doing good. For, every evil that he removes, as of hatred, adultery, theft, false-witness, covetousness, etc., prepares the way for the flowing in of the opposite virtues; and they do flow in from the Divine Humanity of the Lord.

The science of this matter, then, is perfectly plain. Do the negative part, and let God do the positive part. Or, do the positive part, feeling that it is of God. Stop sinning, and give the Lord a chance to act. Cease to do evil; and the learning to do well follows in necessary course, for man must be doing

something. But while man is positive in an adverse direction, the Lord cannot be positive with him so successfully. Be not inactive, but passively active in the hands of the Lord. In short, realize our own feebleness, and our utter dependence on God, and look to him only for help, and our powers will be increased seven-fold. Man only fritters away his powers in any other attempt. He is never so feeble, never so inefficient, as when he says, in a spirit of self-trust and self-consciousness"Now I will, or I am going to do this or that." To be sure, sometimes great things are accomplished by what we call the power of a resolute will; but when it is so, there is almost always a strong belief and reliance on some fate, or destiny, or providence, in man's behalf. Bonaparte was a man of indomitable will; but he believed in destiny. He believed that God

had raised him up for just such a work.

He believed that all

the powers of heaven, or of fate, were on his side, so that he could not fail. And it is wonderful how such a faith in destiny stimulates the human will, - far more perhaps, than the extreme of the doctrine of absolute free-will. A man that really believes in it, does not sit down, and idly fold his hands, trusting to his faith, or to this Fate, or Predestination, to work it out for him. No, but he goes to work himself all the more vigilantly and vigorously, resolving that because it must, it shall be accomplished!

This is the way in

This is the true way. Combine both. which providence is carried on. I say that a man who does not believe in this, but sets out with an air of importance, declaring what great things he will do, will only fret and fume his little self away, and in the end, chance if all he does be not to go headlong into folly's destruction. We have seen such people, and they are the most inconsequential little creatures in the world.

But the soul of great, calm, majestic resolutions, looking to the Lord, and relying on Him, quietly and noiselessly goes

forth, accomplishing the mightiest results with the utmost facility and ease.

And so in this great work of the regenerate life. Even the sound of the wind may not be sensibly heard, it blows so gently and mildly, and through so accordant a nature; but the affections are all tranquil, and the thoughts serene; yet if the wind does rise, and sweep somewhat boisterously through the clogged and perverted channels of the soul, (and the wind always makes the most noise where there is the most obstruction,) then the man knows that he is wrought upon, but he cannot tell whence cometh the mighty spirit, nor whither it goeth. Fortunate for him, if he submit himself to this manifest effort of Providence to train him for the skies, and that he drive not off the angel guardians of his peace.

Finally, the essence of this New Birth is Love. If there was any one thing that distinguished the people of the primitive ages the infancy of the human race, it was a spirit of love grounded in innocence. This is evident from several considerations; and it is plain to be perceived, that as the essence of all evil is selfishness, so the essence of all good is unselfishness, or love for one another. The mind of man, in fact, is made up in general of two parts, the Will and the Understanding, or the affectional and the intellectual natures. Now, the fall of man, or his gradual declension, consisted in the separation of the will from the understanding, or the good affections from the mere intellect, so that, in process of time, the intellectual principle came altogether to predominate; and such is the state of the world at this day. Faith pertains to the intellect, or to the understanding, rather than to the will; and it is conspicuous, that love or charity holds but a subordinate place in the faith of the church and in the practice of mankind.

Now, the New Birth is the uniting again of what has been so grievously sundered. And as the soul of all truth is goodness, or the soul of all wisdom is love, without which it is nothing but a cold, dead body, so this new birth of the Christian is